Michael Gove accused of trying to bring back grammar schools by back door

Labour shadow Andy Burham would not have passed baccalaureate

Pupils will have to get at least grade Cs at GCSEs in English, maths, science - pupils need a minimum of two good GCSE passes - a foreign language, and history or geograph for the baccalaureate. Photograph: Chris Ratcliffe / Rex Features

Michael Gove is turning the clock back to the 1950s and introducing grammar schools by the back door, Labour will warn on Saturday as it launches a campaign against the "elitist" English baccalaureate.

In a personal intervention to highlight Gove's plans to encourage a "dog eat dog world", the shadow education secretary, Andy Burnham, will wear a badge to show that he would have failed the English bac had the system been in place when he was at school in the 1980s because he only passed one science subject, biology.

Burnham, 41, who will be speaking at a headteachers' conference, passed 10 O- levels at St Aelred's Catholic high school on Merseyside and went on to study English at Cambridge.

Gove is under fire for introducing the English bac, to be awarded to teenagers who achieve GCSEs at grade C or above in English, maths, science – pupils need a minimum of two good GCSE passes – a foreign language, and history or geography.

The education secretary says the qualification is designed to raise academic standards by promoting challenging subjects rather than what he regards as the flimsy subjects promoted by Labour.

But the latest annual league tables show that just 15.6% of pupils would have passed the new qualification last summer. Many pupils have taken vocational qualifications in recent years.

Burnham will use his personal background as a pupil in the state sector to show how he believes the Gove plan will harm the chances of bright, but less affluent, children. He will tell the Association of School and College Leaders' annual conference in Manchester: "There is no coherent logic or evidence for the selection of subjects in the English bac.

"It appears to be based on what Michael Gove enjoyed at school and fails to value the arts, technology, business or economics. I got into Cambridge – but I wouldn't have got the English bac."

Burnham will add that Gove appears intent on turning the clock back to the days of England's two-tier secondary education system. "Gove seems to have a plan for some schools and some children but not all schools and all children.

"The risk is a return to a two-tier system. It's almost as if [Gove] wants to recreate grammars and secondary moderns by the back door. Headteachers are rightly furious that they are being judged retrospectively on something they did not know about. Gove seems intent on rubbishing their achievements and damaging their reputations as he sends them out into the dog-eat-dog world he is creating. But it's not just head teachers who are concerned – employers and his own advisers are telling him to think again. He is going the opposite way to the rest of the world – who are preparing for the 21st century and not the 1950s. He is looking increasingly isolated."

Burnham will say that Gove, who has performed U-turns over school sports funding and the provision of books, has shown that he is more suited to his old career as a journalist than to government. "You would think that Mr Gove had learned his lesson from recent U-turns he has been forced to make. But yet again we see him behaving as a journalist, not a minister, and rushing through his changes at breakneck speed with no consultation," he will say.

The shadow education secretary will point out that Professor Alison Wolf, who advises Gove on vocational education, has doubts about the English bac. Wolf has warned of a "serious risk that schools will simply ignore their less academically successful pupils".

Burnham will say: "Last week, Professor Wolf warned of a 'serious risk' that the English bac will lead to schools "simply ignoring" less academically able students. With his narrow, backward-looking agenda, Gove is setting up schools and students to fail and inflicting an elitist experiment on our school system. He is gambling with the life chances of our children and needs to listen to the growing coalition lining up against him."

But Burnham will say that Labour is still committed to promoting strong standards in schools, placing English and maths at the heart of a broad curriculum.

At the launch of Labour's education policy review, he will pledge "a relentless focus on English and maths" to give young people the right skills.

A source close to Gove said: "Under Labour our education system fell behind the rest of the world and is now worse than Estonia's. Labour's legacy is the number of pupils doing the subjects universities and parents value most falling while the number of non-academic subjects rose by over 3,000%. The English bac will mean that all children will get a core of academic knowledge at 16 as they do across the rest of the world."